"The Long Saturday" Subtitle: Steiner Conversation Records Author: [US] George Steiner / [France] Raoul Adler Publisher: Guangxi Normal University Press

This unknown Saturday, this wait without guarantees, is our history.

A summary of the life of George Steiner, the last master of humanism

——“I will fail better next time”

In February this year, George Steiner, a famous American literary critic, passed away. This book compiles a series of conversations between this legendary intellectual and French journalist Laure Adler from 2002 to 2014. It is divided into five chapters, covering a wide range of topics, which is equivalent to Steiner's summary of himself in the last stage of his life.

In the conversation, Steiner vividly recalled his life, how he overcame physical disabilities in his childhood, and how he miraculously escaped Nazi persecution. He always paid attention to Jewish and language issues, calling Jews "guests on earth" and viewing every language as a window to a new world. As a literary critic with profound knowledge across multiple fields, he shared his favorite writers and evaluated Heidegger, Freud, Céline and others. He was already over 70 years old at the time and inevitably talked about death. Before Sunday came, Steiner showed readers the open-minded wisdom of spending this "long Saturday".

George Steiner (1929-2020), a literary critic and translation theorist, is one of the most outstanding intellectuals of our time. He is the author of "Language and Silence" and "After Babel".

Laure Adler (1950- ) is a journalist and writer. He is the author of Marguerite Duras and other works.